Field of Mars (The Complete Novel)

by David Rollins

  *

  Behind his tent, under the stars, Proconsul Crassus laid himself face down on the sand, covered his head with his sagum and sobbed beneath it. His beautiful son … The image of Publius’s head spiked on a lance … it was tattooed on his eyeballs. Even when he clamped his lids down tight, the image remained, the head bobbing up and down on the lance with the motion of the horse, his lips and hair moving as if still alive. Crassus could not stop the tears flowing. All the promise that he held for his son had vanished. All the triumphs, gone … All the victories that would never be …

  Crassus had other sons but none like Publius, a conqueror and almost a legate by the age of thirty. He was an Alexander. Publius – handsome, a favorite with women and adored by his men … Gone. Publius had all that was good in him, Crassus believed, and none of the bad. “Publius, Publius …” he wailed. Over a thousand legionaries had charged the enemy in an attempt to recover his head. All were wiped out, right in front of him. But no, Crassus told himself, that simply could not be possible. Perhaps it was all a dream. Perhaps his son was still alive and the army intact. Perhaps the catastrophe was merely a vision of what might transpire if he continued to ignore the auguries, as he had done to date, all of which foretold of disaster. If so, Crassus told himself, when he woke he would retreat immediately and –

  “Proconsul …”

  Crassus lay still.

  “Marcus Licinius Crassus …”

  Crassus knew that voice – Legate Cassius Longinus. “Go away,” he said. “Leave me.”

  “Primor, we must talk. There are decisions that must be made. What are we to do?”

  “Publius …” he moaned.

  “I summoned all the legates, tribunes, prefects and senior centurions to a council of war. We are all of one mind. We must retreat, primor.”

  “Retreat?”

  “We are an army of infantrymen fighting an army we cannot engage with, but whose weapons can reach us with murderous impunity. We cannot close with them and use sword and spear and by consequence we cannot win. Slaughter is all that awaits us if we refuse to move. And moving forward is no longer a way open to us …”

  “Go away,” Crassus wailed.

  “Primor, I implore you. Let us retreat to the river, under the cover of darkness, replenish our water supplies and let the desert sands beyond provide us with cover. We crossed them once; we can cross them again. If we leave now, we can fight the Parthians another day. Bring the wrath of Rome down on them from the north, from the mountains of Armenia where their arrows will have far less sky in which to rain down on us and wreak their havoc.”

  “Publius … Publius …” cried Crassus as if he’d heard nothing, lost in grief, his head still wrapped in his sagum.

  Legate Cassiuss Longinus kneeled beside the proconsul and brought the man up onto his knees. He removed the cloak from his face and looked into the eyes of a broken old man. “Primor, I have a horse for you. The council awaits your judgement.”

  IX

  Most of the burial work completed, Rufinius and Dentianus made their way back to the century’s place in the encampment. “What about Mena and Popixia?” Dentianus asked, concerned about their slaves.

  “In the rush to attack the Parthians the baggage got left behind with most of the Sixth and Seventh Legions,” Rufinius answered.

  “Then I don’t like their chances.”

  Rufinius didn’t like them either.

  “So we got nothing – no food, not much water.”

  “Other than what we can scrounge,” Rufinius reminded him.

  “You mean I can scrounge?”

  Rufinius shrugged. “Dentianus, if your prowess with the sword matched the lightness of your fingers, you would be Primus Gladius of the entire army.”

  They passed a number of wounded men warming themselves by low fires fueled by the enemy’s spent arrow shafts. In the flickering light, Rufinius saw a legionary bandaging the raw hole in a man’s gut with dirty rags, the air thick with the smell of blood, shit, and vomit, the sounds of buzzing flies and men in pain.

  A man opened his remaining eye and saw Rufinius and Dentianus picking their way through the men. “Centurion … Centurion …” he called out weakly, his voice cracked and dry. “Are we retreating?”

  The legionary who was trying to make the man comfortable joined in. “Everyone says we’re going to leave, primor. Are we getting out of Hades, is that what’s going to happen? What are those cunni in control of our fates saying?”

  “He is lucky,” said another centurion with his leg in a bloody splint, nodding at Rufinius. “He is wounded but he can still march.”

  Before Rufinius could pass along what he knew, which was nothing certain, another wounded legionary lying on his military sagum raised himself up on an elbow. “Are you going to leave us? You’re going to leave us, aren’t you? Don’t leave us behind. I can walk, you watch me.” The man tried to get up and white bone shifted in the ugly wound in his thigh and he collapsed to the ground with a shriek that raised the hair on the back of Rufinius’s neck.

  The legionary with the gut wound said, “If you leave us, Centurion, you know what will happen to us.”

  “If we’re retreating, that’s news to me,” Rufinius told them.

  A legionary just staring into the fire said, “If we’re not leaving, they’ll make us fight in the morning. But how do we fight their ass-fucking arrows?”

  Rufinius had no answers. In truth he’d avoided asking himself these very questions. Their situation was bad, that was plain. They’d lost the day’s fight and were overburdened with wounded. If the army retreated, those who couldn’t walk would, of necessity, be left behind. In that eventuality, one of two fates would then befall them. The enemy would kill them where they lay or they’d be taken prisoner and sold as slaves, providing they survived their wounds. But if the generals decided to stay and fight, how would tomorrow’s battle differ from today’s? Those who were not dead or wounded would soon be so if the Parthians had yet more arrows. When you won, you won it all. And when you lost, well, that was disaster. Rufinius was about to say, “We’ll find out soon enough,” when a clean-shaven Fabianus hobbled up to him and saluted.

  “Centurion, I have come with orders from Hadrianus. A council of senior officers has met with Proconsul Crassus. The army retreats to a Roman garrisoned town to the northwest. We are to make preparations to depart immediately. There will be no orders conveyed by the cornicens, primor. We are to leave silently.”

  “Like thieves,” Dentianus summarized.

  “Are we marching?” asked one of the wounded men nearby who had overheard the exchange.

  “Shit,” said someone. “The army leaves.”

  “I told you,” said another.

  “They’re cunni, the lot of them,” a third added. The wounded men on the ground, the ones who were conscious, tried to move, and the air suddenly filled with the buzzing of disturbed flies.

  “Help me up, help me up,” begged the man with the gut wound. “I can walk.” The legionary who dressed his wound, reluctantly dragged him to his feet, but then black blood gushed from the bandaged rent in the man’s abdomen and he slumped to the ground, eyes open, dead.

  “There’s nothing to be done here, primor,” Dentianus whispered.

  Rufinius knew he was right. “C’mon,” he said and they left the wounded men to their fate and hurried with Optio Fabianus back to their century. But the camp was overflowing with wounded and as news of the army’s movement swept the ranks, a great cry of anguish and fear rose into the night sky louder than any cornicens.

  *

  With no food to eat, tents to repack, slaves to haggle with or baggage trains to manage, it took the legions no time at all to assemble and depart. And so, with the sun still many hours below the horizon and the bright silver starlight turning the legions into an army of ghosts, the army left the encampment’s gate and marched in a number of directions across the desert to confuse pursuit, but slow enough so that
stragglers and the wounded could keep up.

  Rufinius took his place as centurion on the far right of the front row in the century. Behind him marched just forty-two legionaries, most of whom were, like him, nursing wounds of varying severity. Left behind to rot on the desert sands where they fell were thirty-eight of their comrades, the reason for the sullen silence that hung like a poisonous cloud over the ranks.

  *

  First light came to the desert, illuminating a shattered army of men longing to be anywhere but under the approaching sun. The legions’ strength had been gutted, left behind on the sandy plain along with dreams of conquest and booty. Few seemed to embody the magnitude of this loss more than Proconsul Crassus, who rode on his horse like he himself had been mortally wounded, his back hunched, his muscles unable to match the rhythm of the plodding horse beneath him, his sagum worn over his head like an old woman’s shawl. Occasionally he could be heard to lament, “Publius …” before settling into a silence as if whatever life animated his body had departed.

  Cassius Longinus, riding beside the proconsul, kept an eye on him. The disaster of this campaign was Crassus’s, but how could his own reputation avoid being tainted by it? They’d been dealt a defeat by an army less than a quarter the size of their own, purely because the proconsul had refused to listen to wise council – and from many quarters. Had Crassus heeded the Armenian King Artavastes’s advice to approach from the north, they would have received shelter from the mountains, limiting the effectiveness of the Parthian horse archers, and had the use of 30,000 Armenian cavalry with which to augment their own. Had they traveled south along the Euphrates River, they could have landed the army more or less intact in the heart of Babylon itself. In both instances, the legions would’ve been spared the debilitating march across this wind and sand-blown cauldron. And, of course, on this cauldron, the army could and should have been deployed to limit the enemy’s ability to concentrate its fire, arrayed in extended line with the river at its back to avoid being surrounded. But Crassus would not listen to King Artavastes, nor would he listen to his own senior legate – he, Cassius Longinus. Instead he had dismissed all caution – except for that which agreed with his own determination – and now look at the result. A speech would have to be delivered to the senate, and part way through constructing it in his head it dawned on Cassius Longinus that much of the senate was largely in awe of Crassus’s chief supporter, Gaius Julius Caesar, a man not unlike Marcus Licinius Crassus in that he was driven by boundless ambition. Speaking against Crassus would surely set him at odds with Caesar, conqueror of Gallia and subjugator of the Germanic tribes …

  The legate shook his head in a silent lament over the poor timing of this calamitous campaign. Unless things had changed back home, he would be forced to bite his tongue and Rome would be denied the truth. If history remembered Cassius Longinus, at all, he told himself, it would be as the co-architect of one of the biggest and most ignominious defeats in the Republic’s long and glorious history.

  A tribune rode out of the dust and reined in his horse nearby. “Legate, riders from the northwest.”

  “How many?”

  “A couple of hundred, primor. It’s difficult to see, but they appear to be carrying standards. I think they’re legionaries.”

  Cassius Longinus left the proconsul’s side and rode with a detachment of his personal guards to meet the approaching horsemen. They hadn’t ridden far when the legate could see that, yes, the approaching riders were indeed Roman. As they approached, the two small forces slowed to a trot.

  “Greetings. I am Governor Antonius Coponius, garrison commander of the Roman frontier town of Carrhae,” the officer leading the unit announced when he and Cassius Longinus stopped opposite each other in a cloud of dust.

  The legate unwound the sagum from his face, which he used to keep the swirling grit from his lungs, and replied, “I am Senior Legate Gaius Cassius Longinus, serving under Proconsul of Syria, Marcus Licinius Crassus.”

  “Your speculatores riding ahead warned us of your arrival, which is why we’ve ridden to meet you. We hear there has been a great battle.” The governor gestured at one of his men, who rode forward with wineskins containing water and handed them over to the legate and his men. “The gates of Carrhae are open and ready to welcome the legions. The Senate and the People of Rome.”

  “The Senate and the People of Rome,” Cassius Longinus repeated. He took a mouthful to clear his mouth and spat it on the ground. He then drank gratefully and felt relief flow through his body. Wiping his sunburned lips with the back of a filthy hand, he replied formally, “On behalf of Proconsul Crassus, I welcome your hospitality and accept it gratefully.”

  *

  Spāhbed Surenas, Volodates, and a small detachment of 300 horse archers rode ahead of the main body to inspect the deserted Roman camp. Once at the rampart, the sheer size of the camp and its fortifications, hurriedly constructed, could not fail to impress Surenas.

  “The army that held these fortifications was gigantic,” said Volodates beneath a towering rampart, in awe of the scale of it.

  And that must have made the defeat all the more humiliating to this Crassus, Surenas surmised. And yet, despite the heavy toll inflicted on the Romans, its officers still had the presence of mind, and the determination, to dig these fortifications around their entire position. Surenas could not help but be impressed. If men like this set their teeth into Parthia, they would never let it go.

  Surenas rode ahead of his men before coming eventually upon the main gate. Scouts had already informed him that the enemy had departed, the heavily churned sand leading from the gate in many directions, the occasional bird-covered corpse of a fallen legionary dotting the disturbed sand, signposting the various routes of abandonment.

  Surenas brought his horse slowly through the entrance and stopped. And then, from the shadows, two javelins came hurtling toward him. One glanced off his golden armor; the other missed its mark as the spāhbed’s horse shied away. His bodyguards surged forward and formed a protective ring around their lord. Through them, Surenas saw a group of around thirty men. From their bloodied state, all appeared wounded and though none seemed able to walk without support, all were defiantly brandishing their swords. Sounds began to rise beyond them, from the field of discarded shields and spent arrows. There were many men left behind, stricken in some way by wounds or sickness and unable to join the fleeing mass of their comrades. Surenas raised his arm, made a gesture and 2,000 horse archers thundered through gate and began the grisly work the wounded Romans had expected.

  Later, with the voices of these Romans silenced and the camp secured, Surenas stopped beneath a gold-tasseled banner with the symbol of a knot depicted on it. The condition of the tents beyond the banner indicated that these were the premises of the army’s leader – Crassus.

  “The way ahead is clear, Lord,” Volodates assured Surenas as the spāhbed dismounted.

  Soon the Parthian commander-in-chief found himself inside a cavernous tent of many riches – golden candelabras, golden plates, cups and water jugs emblazoned with the Zoroastrian sun; a gold inlaid table and matching chairs; the bust of a powerful man so perfect in its execution that it seemed real enough to draw breath; exquisite wall hangings and rugs; the magnificent pelt of an enormous lion and other treasures. The horde of so much wealth looted, for the most part from Parthian cities, angered Surenas. “Volodates, take my fastest horses. Divide your men and follow the trails left by the Romans. Send word when you have found their army. My archers and I will not be far behind.”

  “There is a town within a day’s march,” Volodates replied. “It is garrisoned by Romans – the town of Carrhae.”

  “You will go there personally. If you find Crassus, this is what you shall tell him …”

  X

  “I can see walls in the distance or I am Jupiter’s bedfellow,” said Carbo, laboring in the heat, the pain of an arrowhead embedded in his chest becoming difficult to bear.

  “
It’s a town,” Rufinius agreed, squinting into the haze as he limped along. “What in Hades is a town doing out here, in the middle of nowhere?” he added, thinking aloud. Out here, survival depended on one thing. “There’s water ahead, legionaries!” he called out behind him. “You’ll be swimming in no time.”

  Not even a half-hearted cheer rose from the century, which had lost another ten men in the march from the battlefield. Even the water donkeys had long ago perished, ironically, from lack of water.

  The army had marched for most of the night and at least half the day on no food and not the slightest drop of moisture and the breaking point was near. What kept the men going was the simple fact – and everyone knew it – that if they stopped, the Parthian archers would inevitably overtake them and death would certainly follow.

  The walls grew in size as the legions approached, the men dragging their feet a little less with the thought of relief just ahead. Soon Rufinius saw camels carting water barrels and Roman soldiers who looked remarkably fresh, plying the exhausted men in the centuries ahead with ladles of water and words of encouragement.

  “These fools don’t have the slightest idea what excrementum is rolling their way,” Dentianus said aloud.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Libo muttered.

  One of the last centuries to march under the gate, Rufinius’s legionaries congratulated each other for having survived yet another ordeal. “We did it!” said Carbo, accepting a cup of water from a garrison soldier in the crowded area.

  “Who attacked you? What happened?” the legionary asked, seeing the dried blood and weeping wounds on nearly every soldier.

  “Nothing, friend,” Libo replied. “Out in the desert it’s hotter than a toilet seat in the sun – that’s all.”

  “Everyone’s wounded,” he said unconvinced. “And your centuries are less than half strength.”